UTAR Department of Soft Skills Competency (DSSC) organised an online workshop titled, “Exploring the Path of E-Commerce Platform” on 8 July 2021 via Zoom and Facebook Live. The workshop attracted 351 participants and it received a total of 360 views.

Invited to deliver the talk were Lazada Talent Acquisition Manager Rema Jayaram, Lazada Chief People Officer Animesh Mukherjee, Lazada Vice President of Organisation and Talent Development Manager Sarah Mubarak and Lazada Head of User Growth Rick Ting. The webinar was moderated by DSSC lecturer Fong Kah Hoong and DSSC staff Lee Sie Yun.

The purpose of the webinar was to enable the speakers to share their knowledge and experience of the digital commerce to the students. After the sharing, the participants also gained insights into e-commerce career and its market demands in Malaysia.

The first speaker, Animesh started the webinar by presenting his topic titled “Graduates through the Pandemic”. He explained that the country is currently facing a difficult pandemic period with the lockdowns and restrictions causing anxiety and worries to many. He believes that it may take a longer time to go through the recovery process until everyone can go back to their normal lives. He said, “In Lazada, we are still continuing our operations during the pandemic, finding ways and mechanisms to create businesses and solutions to these challenges. So, while you are waiting to secure a permanent job, you need to create your own self SWOT analysis. This SWOT analysis is to identify your personal strengths and weaknesses; and the opportunities and threats that you may face in the workplace at the moment, and build your own profile. Besides, you may also focus on building your own curriculum vitae (CV), participate in volunteering jobs, or develop your skills in online courses such as Microsoft Excel or Project Management.”

According to Animesh, the country’s e-commerce and marketing field will keep progressing and accelerating despite the pandemic. This is because the lockdown has imposed a lot of restriction to the traditional markets, so business owners have to find ways to move forward to generate income for their business. Thus, the digital market has expanded and progressed further; even offline companies have taken their opportunity to invest on online servers, and switch from traditional marketing to digital marketing to reach their customers. He encouraged the participants to be positive about their skills and talents. He also asked them to continuously seek and understand the market demands by grabbing any part-time job to improve their skills, and reflect on values that matters to them until the country and economy reach the normal circumstance.

The webinar continued with Sarah’s topic “Your Career, Your Story”. Sarah clarified that she graduated in the year 2000 when Malaysia had just recovered economically. It was a tough time for her to get a real job. She said, “The corporate life is a long marathon journey and story in your life. Success is not about gaining material things, but more to learning something new. Firstly, you need to get comfortable with not knowing, and do something different as opportunities come to you in odd ways. You don’t need to know everything, but trust yourself and make things simple. Secondly, you need to be open to change. Do not get discouraged when a job you really want does not pan out for you because this opens up doors to other opportunity. Thirdly, learn from everything as success comes from a person’s ability to learn.

Sarah then moved on to explain the six values of Lazada which were customers first; employees second and shareholders third; trust makes everything simple; change is the only constant; today’s best performance is tomorrow’s baseline, if not now, when? If not me, then who?; and live seriously, work happily.

Ting continued the webinar by highlighting his working journey in digital market in Malaysia. Initially, as a computer Science graduate, Ting has been working as a coding developer and writing coding to upgrade the software and server system. But as time goes by, he would like to have a career change and try something new, so he grabbed the opportunity to join the e-commerce field as Lazada Head of User Growth.

Ting said, “I understand that we will face a lot of uncertainties after we graduate, especially in finding the right career path that matches our skills. Sometimes we will feel frustrated and discouraged because of the obstacles and challenges we face, and we still may not be able to find the dream job that we want. In Lazada, the e-commerce field requires a fast working pace, which gives a lot of opportunities for the employees to learn and adopt. I advise all of you to keep exploring the opportunities related to your passion, adopt relevant skills to improve your profile and embark on your own working journey.” Apart from that, he also advised the participants to be brave and passionate to try something new, keep honing their skills and do their best for the job interviews.

Fong said, “I hope this sharing session provided a better depiction for the students to understand the opportunities and challenges of working in a digital commerce organisation as well as how the marketing industry has changed due to the pandemic. I hope it gave the students a better guideline on how they could pursue their career path after they graduate. DSSC hopes that more of these sessions will be organised in the future where speakers from the leading industry can share with the students the opportunities that lie within the industry.”

The webinar ended with interactive Q&A and group photography sessions. The webinar is associated with SDG 4: Quality Education, as it provides inclusive and equitable quality education and promotes lifelong learning opportunities for all. It also included SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth, Target 8.6, 'Substantially reduce the proportion of youth not in employment, education or training' as it helped to improve the understanding of students towards the working environment. All the profits from this webinar will be donated to UTAR Hospital.